The present invention, in some embodiments thereof, relates to systems and methods of managing distribution of alert messages.
Alert systems are commonly used in many organizations and facilities and usually involve detection of an alerting situation and reporting the situation to one or more authorized destinations.
Many commercial alarm systems use sensors to detect emergencies such as burglary, leakages of chemicals, or fire and transmit the sensors data to a designated emergency center upon. The center, in turn, transmits messages or calls one or more predefined people to report the emergency situation. Other systems allow people using communication devices to report an emergency situation to an emergency center by calling the emergency center. The center then allows disseminating an alert to designated destinations such as the owner of the facility where the emergency situation occurs. In many cases the designated person cannot respond or react to the emergency situation since the designated person is too far from the location of interest or for other reasons. In this case the person himself is required to contact the police, the fire department, and the like, to ask them to handle the situation.
Other alert systems verify the emergency situation and initiate communication with the authority related to the situation such as the fire department or the police, upon verification of the emergency situation. The communication in some systems is automatic, where the system automatically transmits a message to the police or the fire department and in other systems a human operator calls these authorities.
System such as the commercial mobile alert system (CMAS) or the AMBER alert system allow transmitting text messages through emails or short messaging services (SMS) messages to a plurality of destinations such as police departments and other authorized registered destinations to notify an alert. These systems enable transmission of alert messages on a large scale to a large population in counties, organization departments and the like to allow as many people or organizations that are registered to assist in solving the emergency situation. For example, the AMBER system for searching of missing children transmits messages to as many people and organizations possible in the designated country or county where the child was last seen to allow as many people as possible to assist in searching for that child.